What is Baccarat Commission?

The commission is the deduction a baccarat table takes from a winning banker bet, standardly 5%. A winning banker wager pays even money and then loses a twentieth of the win to the house, so a hundred staked and won returns ninety-five in profit rather than a hundred. It exists because the banker hand is genuinely the better bet. The drawing rules give the banker the advantage of acting last, with knowledge of what the player hand did, and that advantage makes the banker hand win slightly more often than the player hand across a shoe. Paying it at even money with no deduction would hand the bettor an edge over the house, which no table will do. The commission is the correction that puts the margin back. The arithmetic that follows is the part worth carrying away. With the standard 5% commission applied, the banker bet carries a house edge a little over 1% and the player bet a little over 1.2%. In other words the banker bet remains the better of the two even after paying the commission, which surprises players who avoid it precisely because of the deduction. The tie bet is far worse than either and is not made better by any commission arrangement. Two practical variations. Some tables collect the commission hand by hand and others track it and settle at the end of the shoe or when the player leaves, which changes the bookkeeping and not the maths. And no-commission baccarat removes the deduction entirely, paying one specific banker win at reduced odds instead — a different trade, not a free one.